Cloudwatch rocks and we have a ton of alarms to let us know when something breaks (or is about to break!). The only downside is that you can start getting a lot of emails or text messages and if you try not to chronically check your email, you might miss something.

If only there was some way to know something was broken without having to check your mail… luckily there is! For $7 you’ll never have to wonder about the state of your cloudwatch alarms again.

Step 1: Buy this USB mail notifier ($7)

Step 2: Grab this zip file to control the device. It contains compiled version of usbnotifierosx_cli for controlling the device and a very simple PHP script for checking if you have any active cloudwatch alarms.

Step 3: Run the script via crontab every minute. Light is green? No alarms… Red? Alarm!

You can now get back to work and never worry about missing a cloudwatch alarm again.

Thanks to Eric Betts for creating usbnotifier_cli!